The Little Things
Title: The Little Things
Author: Livia_Carica
Rating: PG
Summary: Everyone sees the ways John looks after Sherlock. Almost no one notices what Sherlock does to look after John.
Disclaimer: I have finished with them, you may have them back now.
For this prompt here
A/N: One of these days I will write raging pr0n and surprise you all. Today will not be that day.
When Sherlock had finished hacking into the Marylebone Magistrates Court computers to wipe all records of a pending Anti Social Behaviour Order for one Dr. John H. Watson of 221B Baker Street, he defragged the laptop’s hard drive and installed a virus protection program. Just because John could only type with two fingers didn’t mean that he shouldn’t be protected.
Before he erased all evidence that he’d even been using the laptop, he backed up all the files to a flash drive, including offline copies of John’s blog, and made sure the drivers were up to date.
He was just closing the lid when he heard the door downstairs slam and John’s distinctive footprints clumping up the stairs. By the time John was hanging up his coat, Sherlock was putting the kettle on and rinsing out the teapot.
*~|~*
John had stoically taken a bullet to the shoulder for Queen and Country, but he was whining like a six year old at the amount of blood seeping from the gash on his head.
“I love this shirt,” he moaned, trying to turn around to see the stain spreading around the collar. Sherlock held out a hand to pull John up from the hallway floor, took the overturned chair back into the kitchen and deposited the grousing doctor into it.
“Sit still!” He gingerly poked the area at the base of the skull. “It looks worse than it is.”
John hissed in a breath. “How can it look worse than it is?” he snapped. “And stop poking it! It stings like a bugger. If you’d just changed the bulb in the first bloody place, like I asked… Get me the first aid kit down, will you?”
Sherlock frowned at the back of John’s head, but stood and stretched to retrieve the kit from the top of the refrigerator, making a mental note to put it somewhere more John-accessible in future.
Handing the kit over, he filled a bowl with warm water from the kettle and watched as the doctor tried to clean the wound himself, muttering to himself that an open wound in this kitchen would probably result in Ebola or if he was lucky, hantavirus. Sherlock silently passed him the cotton wool, antiseptic cream and the clean gauze and when John fumbled with the dressing, he gently took it from him and taped it the best he could with all the hair in the way. When John had gone to change, he discretely replaced the broken bulb and cleared a new home for the first aid kit at the end of the kitchen counter.
The next morning, he retrieved the bloody shirt from John’s laundry basket and sent it out with his own dry cleaning.
*~|~*
It was usually after John had visited his therapist that the nightmares were the worst. Instead of picking up the Stradivarius on those nights, Sherlock would sit in silence waiting for the moment John awoke with a strangled sob before he went upstairs. He didn’t fool himself that he was the sympathetic presence John really needed. He couldn’t soothe or pacify but his just being there seemed to provide some comfort and John usually fell asleep soon after he felt the bed dip.
Neither of them ever said a word and Sherlock doubted John even remembered the next morning that he’d been there at all.
*~|~*
When Harry’s divorce was finalized, the late night phone calls came frequently. John’s frustration after these calls was evident in his hunched shoulders and clenched jaw and he would brood for hours, his brow pulled low.
Sherlock took to sitting in the chair nearest the phone to do his reading, and because she was predictable and called within the same 15 minutes each night, he managed to intercept nearly all of her calls.
“Need to speak to John.” Slurred, judging from the noise in the background still in a bar somewhere. She didn’t believe him when he told her John was not available and she knew some inventive expletives, he’d give her that.
“Well, I’ll be sure to give him the message, although I will probably have to leave out most of the references to male genitalia, and the dubious and possibly illegal sexual practices. But otherwise, it’s been a delight.”
When John came through from the kitchen with his supper and asked who was on the phone, Sherlock shrugged and didn’t look up from his book.
“Wrong number.”
*~|~*
It was second nature for him to forgo sleep during a case. His holy trinity of adrenalin, caffeine and nicotine could sustain him for hours, his synapses firing left, right and center. Once he picked up a thread he needed to run with it and for that he also needed John, scribbling away on a notepad because sometimes going back over the trains of crisscrossed thought later yielded a connection missed or clue overlooked. It was nearing 4 a.m. and he was almost there, it felt tangible, like he could reach out and pluck it from the air.
“Can you read out all the connections between the investigating officer and the security guard at the museum? John…?”
All he got in return was a snuffling snore. Sherlock swore in frustration; he hated having to write everything himself, it slowed him down.
Before he took the pen and paper from the sleeping Watson, he grudgingly pushed the Union Jack pillow under the blond head; he’d be impossible in the morning with a kink in his neck. He told himself that tucking the blanket in would mean that John would be ready to take on whatever tomorrow had in store without aching muscles; he did like to complain after their late nights.
He had no idea why he took off John’s shoes and swung his legs up onto the sofa, or ran a restrained hand over sandy hair.
*~|~*